Rants and raves about the mess of higher education in the United States.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

UNC Just Following the Fraud Template

By Professor
Doom

I really don’t want to give the
impression I’m picking on UNC here. The extensive, epic, long-running fraud at
UNC is nothing special. I daresay there’s a template for the fraud going on
higher education, the only reason I’m discussing UNC is because it’s out in the
open, at least in this one place. My book covers in detail what happened to
higher education so that this level of fraud is now fairly standard at many
supposedly legitimate, state-run, institutions (I don’t reckon anyone had any
illusions about the legitimacy of most for-profitinstitutions).

A recent article picks some of the juicier bits of
fraud out of Wainstein’s UNC report, but I feel the need to point out,
as juicy as they are, they may as well be jerky in terms of such things being
new information to anyone that actually works in higher education. I’ll try
keep my reminders of “accreditation neither cares about fraud, nor has any
means to stop academic fraud” to a minimum.

“Crowder provided the students with no
actual instruction, but she managed the courses from beginning to end,” the
report states.”

What, we had an instructor for thousands
of students that performed “no actual instruction”? This is very common in
higher education. Due to quirks in hiring, it’s quite possible for someone
unqualified, and unqualifiable, to teach in high schools to nevertheless teach
at the college level. I’ve seen them, and, yeah, they don’t do any actual
instruction. As long as they pass lots of students, admin doesn’t care. A
teacher that actually does instruct students runs a risk of student
complaints…many professors don’t take the risk, even the competent ones.

“Wainstein’s investigation was yet
another in a long series of university inquiries, none of which has managed to
bring a close to a scandal that has been repeatedly revived by new allegations…”

Administration, without integrity, is in a
wonderful, wonderful, position to squelch any investigations into
administrative lapses of integrity. Wainstein’s report wasn’t even close to the
first attempt to expose the epic, widespread fraud going on at UNC. You pretty
much have to be an idiot to believe that UNC administration, which managed to
squelch all the previous investigative attempts, was ignorant of what was going
on. That’s the problem with cover-ups, you see: if you cover up the activity,
you can’t honestly claim you didn’t know about the activity. I have to include
the weasel word “honestly” in that because administration keeps doubling down
on their claims of ignorance and incompetence (not that they’re offering to
return any of their massive salaries. Of course).

I spent about two years trying to expose
what was going on at one school; the cover up was complete, the retaliations
were firm, and administration’s claims of “we didn’t know we were doing
anything wrong” got ever more shrill as I demonstrated their attempts at
cover-up. But I digress.

“…some of the most damning new
evidence in Wainstein’s report comes in the form of internal documents and
emails that the university presumably had access to all along…The report
largely absolves high-level administrators of having direct knowledge of the
fraud, but it blames a decentralised management style for allowing the fraud to
go on for 18 years…”

So, at best, the report says that all the
administrative staff at UNC are wildly incompetent to the point that nobody,
nowhere, could connect the dots. Even after years of people telling
administration that there was systematic fraud going on at UNC, and circling
the dots at every opportunity, administration says they just had no means to
tell.

This, too, is fairly common in higher
education today. In the past, administration was drawn from people at the
institution, primarily faculty. These people had loyalty to the institution,
loyalty to their colleagues, loyalty to the alumni that faculty created.
Nowadays, administrators are drawn from outside the institution…they have no
loyalty to the institution, so they can casually destroy the integrity and
reputation of the institution, and certainly care nothing for the faculty or
alumni. Instead, they diligently look for, and exploit, ways to further destroy
the integrity and reputation of the school. In return for this, they gain the
ability to get a promotion…at another institution down the road, where the
plunder begins anew.

I’m not saying administrators aren’t often
wildly incompetent (I’ve certainly documented it enough times), but the current
system of fraud is set up so that, despite the intense hierarchy of
administration, they can say it’s “decentralized” enough that nobody need take
responsibility for anything, and certainly nobody need be in a position to
connect the dots.

It’s the Penn State excuse all over
again: despite report after report of eyewitness testimony of the chamber of
horrors activities going on at Penn State, no administrator opened his mouth.
Instead, he kept his mouth closed, brushed up his resume, sold out his
integrity, and moved on up to another institution.

"We put them in classes that met
degree requirements in which
They didn’t go to class
They didn’t take notes, have to stay awake
They didn’t have to meet with professors
They didn’t have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material.
…"

The above is a slide from a PowerPoint
presentation, created by academic counselors, shown to UNC staffers to get them
to grieve the loss of the fake classes, and to get students to sign up for the
few that were left before it was too late.

I want to point out something with
abundant clarity: NOBODY saw that and thought “gee, isn’t there some sort of
academic fraud going on here?”When
this stuff is going up on PowerPoint and shown to an audience, it’s pretty
clear there’s nobody around with any sense of academic integrity.

Incidentally, the academic advisor who
created the above slide has moved up and is now at a different campus. Of
course. Did I mention that the “news” from this report isn’t news to anyone in
higher education?

In one exchange, regarding a basketball
player, Crowder asked Boxill if "a D will do."

"I’m only asking," Crowder wrote, "because 1. No sources, 2, it
has absolutely nothing to do with the assignments for the class and 3. It seems
to be a recycled paper."

"Yes," Boxill replied, "a D will be fine; that’s all she
needs."

What, you mean the professor is politely
asking for permission to give a student a D for work that is wildly
substandard? “Substandard” is actually a little generous: read the above
description of the essay again, and realize the student could have easily have
just turned in an Ann Landers column or something similar.

This level of fraud at UNC is not news in
higher education.

Um, I’ve had an administrator specifically
tell me to “help” a student despite clearly failing work, and, absolutely, I’ve
felt the need to ask permission to fail students, even those that obviously
were doing nothing in the course.

UNC is not that special, really.

“In a review of 150 final papers
written for AFAM classes, investigators found evidence that suggested
plagiarism. In three out of five of the papers, a quarter or more of the text
was found to be "unoriginal".”

I had the opportunity to review a few
dozen papers from a class by a certain professor, a professor with a reputation
for “easy”, and receiving constant praise and promotion from admin. At least
50% of the student papers were OBVIOUSLY plagiarized, but all the students got
A’s all the same.

So, yeah, nothing new here, either. Sorry
UNC, you’re not special.

“…Around 2005 or 2006, for example,
Roberta (Bobbi) Owen, senior associate dean for undergraduate education, had
lunch with Nyang’oro and complained about the "extremely high number"
of independent studies he was personally offering. (He sometimes supervised
more than 300 in an academic year.)…”

Hey, did you catch the title there? Not
just dean, not just associate dean, but SENIOR associate dean. Part of why
tuition is so ridiculously high now, as I’ve shown in detail, is that there are now ridiculous
numbers of administrators on campus, and these administrators make ridiculous
salaries. Three levels of deanhood watching over…what, exactly? They obviously
have nothing to do with education, or maintaining integrity, by their own
admission, and the report agrees. So what do we need these deanlings for?

Again, this is not news. I’ve made
procedural mistakes, correctible with 5 minutes of effort, which nonetheless
required 3 different administrators to let me know about the mistake. In
writing.

Again, UNC is nothing special in having
senior associate deans.

“…She never bothered to ask how
Nyang’oro could possibly handle so many independent studies, the report says…”

Did I mention the senior chief junior associate
mid-level assistant sub-coordinator dean was female? That’s another weird quirk
of higher education. I’ve nothing against females mind you, but it’s just
statistically weird how that happens. I’m guessing the reason for it is
administration doesn’t want to show gender bias in their hiring, so they make
sure to bias their hiring to get lots of females in “leadership” positions…I
wish my guess were facetious.

So the guy is covering 300 papers a year,
and there’s surprise that a professor is physically capable of that?
But…classes with hundreds of students in them are fairly common in higher
education now, how come nobody is asking how those classes could possibly have
any educational value? It seems like someone should ask that question…

And, again, professors with more students than
they are physically capable of materially helping is common throughout higher education. UNC is not special here at all.

“…McMillan even signed grade sheets
for courses he knew he had not taught, the report says. When pressed as to why,
he had no good answer for investigators…”

McMillan was not a tenure track professor,
but a “lecturer.” The majority of professors in higher education now are not
tenure track, have no job security, and are paid practically nothing. The only
reason McMillan was allowed to keep his marginal job was he did what he was
told. So, yeah, no wonder he had no good answer. He answers the investigator honestly,
and he’s fired.

And, again, this is not unique to UNC,
most of higher education is taught by people in just as desperate a situation
as McMillan.

Ok, I guess it’s time find something else
to write about, but before I finish for today, one more thing: UNC, like many
other schools that practice this level of fraud, is fully accredited.

Accreditation means nothing, since schools
self-report their legitimacy. Please, gentle reader, use UNC as an example for
how well that self-reporting is working out.